"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , Iain M Churches
wrote:
I listened carefully to the 1st violin. It was perfectly clean. The
limited lower range of the cello did not give me a chance to evaluate
the LF performace of the amplifier. The transformer was, I assume,
Russian made.

Listening to single instruments, or to ones where the players may adapt
their pitch whilst playing may not show up low-order distortion as clearly
as other combinations of instruments.

Perhaps my meaning was unclear. I followed the first violin within the
quartet. I was unable to listen to single instruments. All players, with
the
exception of pianists, and players of some percussion instruments
have the ability adapt their pitch, so I am not clear what you mean by
your statement. Are you referring to intonation?

Hence it is possible that what you
describe was not a very 'hard' test of the distortion performance of the
amp or speakers.

It is the only evaluation available to me, as I heard only the one CD and
even that was a pre-production disc.

Also, if the power level was the order of a Watt, the
distortion level even with a SET might have been reasonably low. Hence it
may be simple factors like these that allow the SET to sound OK with such
music.

OK is not an adequate expression. I was greatly impressed. That doesn't
happen very often:-)


Can only speculate in the absence of reliable data on the actual
conditions
of use, etc. But the above seems to me to be at least plausible.


I am sorry that I cannot offer enough data for a complete technical
analysis.
But I can tell you that, for the music in question, the listening experience
was
quite remarkable, and I would recommend it to anyone.

Iain